Teddy Wesleyan had been true to his word in finding Coach Ryan players. Mike and Damion had become a lethal combination as the season wore on. They’d lost two games early but had run the table once they figured things out. Basically, you threw the football to Damion—a lot. And why wouldn’t you? Damion was six-six, ran like the wind, and had learned to catch the ball. If he were on my team, I would just tell him to go deep and let him use his size against smaller defenders. That was precisely what Wesleyan had done, to great success.
What irritated me, besides not having Damion on my team, was that it made Mike look like he was one of the best quarterbacks in the state. Michigan had offered him, and he’d verbally accepted. That was the one factor that made me hesitate about going there. His older brother was a dick, but Mike was far worse.
Mike was a good-looking guy and could date anyone he wanted, but Mike only seemed interested in going after women who were dating someone else. That predilection had led to his transferring last year. It was that, or Jim would have killed him. I might have held Mike down, but Jim was the one who wanted payback. When a guy Jim’s size decides to kill you, it’s time to go.
Tami admitted that Mike had hit on her after he started at Wesleyan. When she didn’t fall for his charms, he’d set his sights on Harper, my ex-girlfriend. I was sure he did it as a way of saying ‘f you’ to me. I almost felt sorry for Harper, but felt confident that Tami had warned her. The other girls I knew at Wesleyan had heeded Tami’s warning.
The one whom I was surprised had followed Tami’s advice was Jenny Wesleyan. She’d confirmed my belief that she had terrible taste in men when she’d dated my nemesis, Mark from Eastside.
From all reports, Harper was happy. I knew that it was only a matter of time before Mike broke her heart by cheating on her. I didn’t think Mike could help himself. Someday he would do that, and someone would seriously hurt him.
The other person who had gone to Wesleyan was Alan. He’d talked his way into helping the coaching staff. Now
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During football practice, we took time to practice onside kicks.
“Last week, we used what’s called the drag-and-dribble technique to success because they weren’t expecting it. Once Broadview knew we were going to onside-kick and got the right players on the field, we didn’t recover any others,” Coach Stevens reminded us.
“To be honest, that form of the onside kick has the lowest recovery percentage because it requires a gentle touch and a lot of luck,” he continued.
“I liked our luck then,” Ed said.
We all agreed.
“This week, I want to try a new kick,” Coach Stevens said. “It’s called the pop-up kick. This is the one you’ll see being done at higher levels of football almost exclusively. Derek will sweep his foot through the very top of the ball, making contact right around the stripe. This causes the top point to smack the ground, causing the ball to pop up.
“The receiving team is taught to focus on the ball and ignore the defenders to make the recovery. Derek, I want you to kick the ball right at the outside upman if you can. His teammates will naturally try not to rush him so he can focus on recovering the ball.”
That made sense, because like in baseball, you wanted one person to call the ball to catch it. What was terrible was when two players ran into each other, and neither caught it. I assumed the same applied to onside kicks.
“We’ll line up seven players on the side we plan to kick to. Five of you will be designated to block their upmen; two will go after the ball,” Coach Stevens told us as he drew up the play.
Our goal was to outnumber our opponents; if they were tied up with a block, it left us free to recover the ball. Coach positioned me next to the kicker, and I was assigned to chase after the football. He placed Ed so he was lined up directly across from the upman we would kick toward. Coach utilized Wolf and Don as blockers because of their size and speed as receivers. He also pressed Tim, Yuri, and Jake into duty because they were our best linebackers and able to deliver some punishment.
What I liked about his plan was that it put a lot of pressure on the upman the ball was being kicked toward. He had every advantage because he was able to charge the ball inside the ten yards. We had to wait until he either touched it or the ball traveled the requisite distance.
“One other point,” Coach Stevens said. “When you recover the football, always hand it to the referee. With the mass of bodies, they may not see who recovered the ball if you just drop it after the play.”
